A few blocks later I turned into an alley between office buildings, making my way through a maze of parking lots and side streets. I planned to walk to one of the bus stops near the freeway and take the bus home. Then I would examine the data on the thumb drive and consider my next course of action. I had mapped out a plan for getting into McCade’s vault during the gala, but I needed more details.
I stopped and looked around. I was in an alley, and there was no one nearby. It should be safe to let my Mask dissipate. I released the spell and the illusion vanished, drifting away like smoke. Relief went through me, and I sighed and took a few deep breaths. Maintaining a Mask wasn’t hard, but it was a constant effort. Sort of like carrying a cinder block around with you. Which, come to think of it, sounded like a good workout idea…
I shook my head, crossed another parking lot, ducked into an alley, and froze.
The man with the sweatshirt and the wrap-around sunglasses was walking down the center of the alley, no more than twenty yards away. It was the same man I had seen outside of McCade’s mansion, I was sure of it. Up close, he looked lean and tough, moving with the confident stride of a man who knew how to handle himself.
He took one more step, saw me, and froze. The big sunglasses concealed much of his expression, but I could tell that he recognized me and that he hadn’t expected to see me here.
For a moment we stared at each other, my heart pounding, my head racing with a dozen different plans.
He spoke first.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in an alley like this?” he said. His voice was flat, unemotional.
“Seriously?” I said. “You’re going with that? Bit clichéd, isn’t it? Next you’ll tell me it was a dark and stormy night.”
“I saw you at McCade’s mansion,” said the man. “You were on the cleaning crew.”
“Or are you hitting on me?” I said. “Are you going to tell me that heaven must be missing an angel? That’ll work. Women love getting hit on by weird guys with sunglasses in alleys.”
I had the pleasure of seeing his mouth tighten with annoyance. “No, you were there, with the cleaning crew."
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’ve never cleaned a day in my life. I don’t even do laundry. I just buy new clothes when the old ones get dirty.”
“You were at the mansion,” said the man, “and then you followed me here.”
I blinked. He thought that I had followed him?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I didn’t follow you. I just want to be left alone.”
“You’ve been following me,” he said. “Why?”
I couldn’t see any weapons on him, but he could have a knife or a small gun tucked away in that baggy sweatshirt. For that matter, he looked like he was in good shape. I was in good shape, too, but he stood a foot taller than me and outweighed me by fifty or sixty pounds. If he had any fighting experience at all, he wouldn’t need a gun or a knife to handle me.
“I haven’t been following you,” I said, “and I’ve never seen you before in my life. I’d remember those stupid sunglasses.”
His mouth twitched a little. “They help my eyes.”
“Well, goody for you,” I said. “Why don’t you go help your eyes somewhere else?”
“You’re going to answer some questions for me,” said the man.
“Okay,” I said. “Fine. What do you want to know? I…”
I flinched and took a step back, my eyes going wide.
It was an old, old trick, but sometimes the old tricks work. The man half-turned, and as he did, I whirled and sprinted as fast as I could, grateful that I had not chosen a disguise that required high heels. I had reached the end of the alley before he got himself collected and started pursuit.
He was fast. Like, professional athlete fast. I had a good lead, but he was going to catch me. I couldn’t fight him off.
Which meant I was going to have to get clever.
I tore around the corner into an alley between a strip mall and an office building. Dumpsters stood here and there, and closed steel doors led into the back rooms of the various mall shops. I had maybe six seconds before my pursuer came around the corner. I stopped, put my back to the wall, and took a deep breath, trying to clear my mind and summon magical power.
Then I cast the Cloak spell.
Cloaking was hard, really hard. When Masking, I could move around and interact with people. Cloaking took the entirety of my concentration and willpower. It was a bit like doing a deadlift at the limits of your strength – it took everything I had to do it.
But I did it.
Silver light flashed around me, and the world went hazy and indistinct, like a sheet of cloudy glass had fallen over my vision. While the Cloak spell was in place, I was completely invisible. No one could see me, and no magical spell could detect my presence.
I just couldn’t do anything else while I maintained the Cloak.
My pursuer came around the corner maybe a second and a half later. He ran past me, then stopped, his face turning back and forth as he tried to find me. I took deep, controlled breaths, focused on holding the Cloak. Working the Cloak had been difficult. Maintaining the Cloak got harder with every passing second. It was a lot like holding a barbell over my head – hard at first, and getting more difficult.
The man took three quick steps back, his sunglasses swiveling back and forth, and came to a stop two feet away from me. I could have reached out and touched him. Up close, he looked handsome in a lean sort of way beneath the big sunglasses, and for an absurd instant I wondered what color his eyes were. He had a ragged shock of brown hair above the sunglasses, his brow furrowed as he looked back and forth.
I noticed something else, too. He didn’t have a shadow. At this time of day, the dumpsters cast shadows. I had a shadow, too, though the Cloak hid it. Yet he didn’t have one. That was bad. I had heard rumors of men without shadows, and none of them were good.
For now, though, the man with no shadow looked puzzled. To his perspective, I had just disappeared. There hadn’t been enough time to force open one of the doors or to climb up the wall to the roof. His gaze turned towards the nearest dumpster, his frown tightening. Likely he thought that I had hidden myself among the trash bags. I expected him to stride forward and search the dumpster, and then depart the alley. That would take no more than a few moments, and I could maintain my Cloak that long.
Instead he lifted his right hand, gesturing with his left, and tiny arcs of lightning snarled around the fingers of his right hand, harsh and blue-white.
The man was a wizard.
He pushed out his right hand, and the arcs of lightning burst from his fingers and jumped to strike the dumpster, wrapping around it with a crackling hiss. The man strode forward as the lightning faded away, reached up, and flipped the lid open to rummage through the trash bags.
I started to shake from the effort of maintaining the Cloak.
At last the man with no shadow stepped back and looked around once more, his frustration plain.
“How in the hell did she do that?” he muttered.
That gave me a little jolt of satisfaction. I tried to use it to maintain the Cloak. The man cast another spell, one I recognized. It was the spell to detect the presence of magic. It would have worked to detect a Mask (one of the reasons I couldn’t use it with Elves or other wizards), but the Cloak shielded me from detection spells. The man swept his hand back and forth and found nothing. He gave another annoyed shake of his head, turned, and stalked from the alley.
I was alone again.
I made myself count to three hundred, my shoulders and legs shuddering with the effort of maintaining the Cloak. The man did not return, and at last I let the Cloak dissipate, the magic fading away. I wanted to sit down and take a nap, but I made myself turn and walk, gathering energy for another spell. I whispered in Elven and worked another Mask, making myself look like an elderly woman in a tracksuit and sneakers. If the man with the sunglasses saw me from a
distance, he would only see an old woman out for a walk. The effort made my head throb with pain, but I dared not lower the Mask.
I did not release the Mask until I got on the bus, got off at the stop near my apartment, and made sure that no one was nearby. A wave of dizziness went over me, and I just barely managed to get into my apartment before I slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, breathing hard.
A wave of despair went through me. Morvilind would work spells like this with barely an effort, and I felt as exhausted as if I had run a marathon. How could I ever break free of him if I could not even do this?
I pushed aside the despair. One problem at a time. First, I had to steal the tablet from McCade. I had to avoid McCade’s security and the strange man in the sunglasses, whoever or whatever he was. Then I could worry about other things.
Yes. One problem at a time. Easiest thing in the world, right?
It was a long time before I could stand up again.
Chapter 4: Dance
The time to the Conquest Day gala flew by.
Conquest Day is on July 4th, at least in the United States. It’s different in other countries. In Russia, it’s on the anniversary of Red October. In the United Kingdom, Conquest Day falls on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. It’s on July 4th in the United States because that was the day three hundred odd years ago that the High Queen executed the President and Congress on live television.
I spent the time preparing.
I kept up my façade at both Duncan Catering and EZClean Cleaners, helping to make appetizers and cakes in the morning and cleaning houses at night. The next time the EZClean crew went to McCade’s mansion for its weekly cleaning, I volunteered to do the art gallery and the library. Since both tasks were so unpleasant, the shift supervisor accepted without complaint. That meant I was alone in the library for a few moments. The security men had checked us over thoroughly, complete with metal detectors. A vacuum cleaner set off the metal detectors, but that was to be expected.
Which meant that the small duffel bag I concealed in the vacuum’s cylinder was not detected. Halfway through vacuuming the library, I used my levitation spell to float to the top of the high shelves on the first floor of the library, in the corner where none of the cameras reached, and duct-taped the bag on the top of the shelf, out of sight from the floor and the second-story balcony.
The week after that, I used my levitation spell to float up and check the duffel bag again. The bag had not been disturbed, and I was confident that it would be there on the night of the gala.
Better and better.
At Duncan Catering Company, I got myself assigned to the crew scheduled to serve the food at McCade’s gala. We would take one of the company’s big white vans to the mansion, and I had noticed that while the security men always screened the workers, they never bothered to check any vehicles in the utility garage. That was a mistake, because it meant the duffel bag I taped to the bottom of the van would not be noticed.
When I wasn’t working at one of my two full-time jobs, I prepared in other ways. A printer that could print an intricate holographic design like McCade’s party invitation cost upward of fifteen thousand dollars. I wasn’t about to spend that much money, and computer equipment like that had to be licensed with Homeland Security. So I found a print shop, broke in one night, and borrowed their printer to print the invitation. Once I finished, I used a magnet to wreck the computer’s hard drive. The unfortunate owners would assume that the computer had crashed, which in turn had messed up the printer’s page count.
Hopefully they had good backups.
Once that was done, I spent the rest of my time going over the plans to McCade’s mansion, committing them to memory, and practicing the spells I needed. I also made contingency plans in case the job went sour and I had to run for my life. I had a storage unit out in the edge of Wauwatosa, not far from the freeway, and I stocked it with canned food and other supplies if I needed a place to hide. Of course, if the job went really bad, and if I was taken prisoner, Morvilind would use that vial of blood to kill me and dispose of any evidence of his involvement. Or McCade’s security people would just shoot me on the spot. The money I had left behind for Russell might help James and Lucy…but if they could not find another Elven noble willing to treat his frostfever…
Well. That settled it. I just had to get in and out of the mansion alive. Easy as pie, right?
The biggest unknown variable was whatever waited behind that vault door in the library. The plans for the vault were not in the mansion’s blueprints. Bypassing the door would be easy enough – Morvilind had taught me a great deal about the magic of releasing locks – but I had no idea what waited behind the vault door.
The second unknown variable was the strange man with no shadow. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know who or what he was. He seemed to think that I had been following him. That was absurd – I had enough trouble without asking for more. Yet that made me wonder if he had business of his own in McCade’s mansion.
Maybe someone else had hired him to steal the tablet.
That could be dicey.
I would just have to keep my wits about me.
###
At last Conquest Day came.
It rained all morning and most of the afternoon, the sort of heavy, hard summer rain that made everything smell like a gym locker. It slowed to a drizzle by the time I parked my old Duluth Car Company sedan a few blocks from the Duncan Catering building. I walked to the building, sweating a little in the humidity. If anyone asked, I would claim that I had taken the bus to work. I wanted to keep the sedan nearby in case I had to make a quick escape. I had already made arrangements for an escape vehicle near McCade’s mansion, but a backup never hurt.
The other servers and I changed into our formal uniforms, white shirts, slender black ties, black slacks, and shiny black shoes. At least they were flats, thank God. I pretended to tie my shoe just long enough to make sure my little duffle bag was still taped to the bottom of the van, and then I joined the others. Once we were ready, we loaded the food into the van, climbed in, and drove across Milwaukee to McCade’s mansion.
We got to McCade’s mansion at half past six, parking the van in its usual spot in the utility garage. The security men stood guard at the doors, and subjected us to the customary weapons scan and search. I made sure not to bring a phone, so they didn’t confiscate it. The less evidence I left behind, the better. It took a dozen trips to bring everything up to the mansion’s kitchen, a vast expanse of gleaming white tile and polished steel about six times the size of my apartment. It took us the better part of an hour to get everything set up, and another twenty minutes to get the food properly heated.
Then it was almost eight o’clock, which meant it was time to serve hors d’oeuvres to McCade’s guests.
I put on my friendliest smile, picked up a tray loaded with shrimp puffs, and walked with the others to meet the wealthiest and the most powerful of the Midwest.
Already a substantial crowd had gathered in the glassed-in courtyard. Pale silver and blue mood lighting played over everything, and a hidden projector threw a scene onto the glass, an image of the High Queen’s banner rippling in the breeze, an American flag flying below it. I had to admit it made for an impressive sight. Already men in expensive black suits and women in sleek black dresses and high heels stood talking. Here and there I saw a man in the blue officer’s uniform of Homeland Security, and a few in the black-trimmed red uniform of the Wizards’ Legion. I recognized several men as ambassadors from the various client states of the European Union and others from the Chinese Imperium. I suppose McCade’s meat products had fans overseas. There were even a few minor Elven nobles already, mostly knights and barons from the United States and the European Union, standing aloof and cold from the human guests, their gaunt, pale faces masks of hauteur. The Elven men wore long blue coats that hung to their knees, their ornamented red cloaks thrown back, while the women wore shimmering gowns of green and blu
e. Two of the Elven nobles were Knights of the Inquisition, stark in their long black coats with silver lightning bolts upon their collars, and even the other Elves avoided the Inquisitors.
Had I used a Mask, every wizard and every Elf in the courtyard would have sensed it at once. Just as well I had employed a more mundane disguise.
Besides, when you’re pretending to be a waiter, it’s like you’re invisible.
So long as you don’t spill anything, of course.
I circulated through my assigned segment of the courtyard, the silver tray with the shrimp puffs balanced upon my left hand. The damned thing was heavier than it looked, and I was grateful for all the hours I had spent doing push-ups, pull-ups, and deadlifts. Granted, I hadn’t thought I would put my strength training to use carrying a tray of shrimp, but I wasn’t going to complain. I made sure to start with the Elves (I definitely did need an accusation of elfophobia just now), bowing as I offered them the tray. Only one of the Elven nobles deigned to take a shrimp puff, and then I moved through the human dignitaries. The shrimp proved more popular there, and soon my tray was empty. One man in particular, a stout Homeland Security major whose blue uniform made his paunch look distressingly like a blueberry, took five puffs. He then continued his inebriated flirtation with an annoyed-looking blond woman at least fifteen years his junior.
I made sure to remember him for later.
Once the last shrimp puff had been claimed, I circled the edge of the courtyard and vanished into the kitchens. Orderly chaos reigned in the kitchens, with thirty different men and women hurrying about their tasks, some of them cooking more food, other refilling trays, others pouring champagne into glasses. I slipped past them, tucked my tray under my arm, and headed down the stairs to the utility garage. Only one security guard remained on watch, a bored expression on his face as he played a game on his phone, and he glanced up at me.
“Someone spilled bleach on the tray,” I said. “Have to get a new one.”
The guard grunted and looked back at his phone.
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 6